The Moon and the Melodies / Cocteau Twins // Official website

“I don’t know if it actually worked, but working with Harold is great. I think it turned out more like four songs that sounded like us and four songs that sounded like him, which wasn’t really the plan. We met him and he just seemed like such a nice bloke. I don’t care about the music he makes or the music that any of the people I work with make, because quite often it’s that you meet them and you like them, and therefore you want to do something. I like Harold because of his very laid-back nature.” Robin Guthrie

“As musicians, I found them immensely interesting people to work with. And in spite of my inclination to work alone, it’s great to get into the studio with someone else and pick each other’s brains—very satisfying.” Harold Budd

The Moon and the Melodies

November 1986
4AD
CAD 611
37 min, 24 sec

Track listing

Sea, Swallow Me
Memory Gongs
Why Do You Love Me?
Eyes are Mosaics
She Will Destroy You
The Ghost Has No Home
Bloody and Blunt
Ooze Out and Away, Onehow

Formats

Vinyl
Cassette
CD
Digital

Performers

Release notes

All songs written and produced by Budd, Guthrie, Raymonde, Fraser.
Richard Thomas plays saxophone on tracks 5 & 6 and drums on track 7 courtesy of Dif Juz.
Art direction, design and photography by 23 Envelope.

The track “Memory Gongs” was later released on Harold Budd’s LP Lovely Thunder under the title “Flower Knife Shadows.”
“Sea, Swallow Me” appeared on live set lists in 1986.
The song title “Bloody and Blunt” is borrowed from a lyric in the Head Over Heels song “The Tinderbox (of a heart),” and the song title “Ooze Out and Away, Onehow” is from a lyric in the song “My Love Paramour,” also from Head Over Heels.
Robin Guthrie went on to collaborate with Harold Budd on several other projects—film scores for the Gregg Araki films Mysterious Skin (2004) and White Bird in a Blizzard (2014), as well as the albums Before the Day Breaks (2007), After the Night Falls (2007), Bordeaux (2011), Winter Garden (2011), and Another Flower (2020).